BunzelGram

February 1, 2021    Issue #28

 

This Week's Thoughts On Mysteries, Thrillers, and All Things Crime

 

I want to congratulate all my fellow mystery and crime writers who were nominated this year for an Edgar Award, honoring the very best in the genre as recognized by the Mystery Writers of America. From those who have been selected for their very first novel, to those veterans who have mastered the art of telling a compelling story, I wish you all the best of luck when the winners are revealed April 29. Please see the story below, and click on the link for all the nominees.

—Reed Bunzel

Book Sales Post Another

Strong Weekly Gain

Publishers Weekly reports that print book sales are off to a hot start in 2021, with total units sold up 18% over the week ended January 25, 2020. In the prior week, unit sales jumped nearly 23% over 2020, resulting in a 22% increase in print sales through January 23 over the comparable period a year ago. Furthermore, every major category had double digit increases last week, led by young adult nonfiction (up 48.5%) and YA fiction (up 46.9%). Adult fiction sales rose 18.5% over the same week in 2020, with George Orwell’s 1984 the #1 book in the category, selling over 27,000 copies. Adult nonfiction sales had the lowest weekly gain, increasing 13%. The top-selling print book overall last week was Alice Schertle’s Little Blue Truck’s Valentine, which sold more than 33,000 copies. Ambitious Girl by Meena Harris had a strong debut, selling upwards of 26,000 copies in its first week sale. The two titles helped boost overall sales in the juvenile fiction category 28.7% over the comparable week in 2020.

 
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2021 Edgar Award

Nominees Announced

Just minutes after I sent out last week’s BunzelGram, the Mystery Writers of America announced the 2021 nominees for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, and television published or produced in 2020. The 75th Annual Edgar Awards will be celebrated on April 29, 2021. Here are the nominees for Best Novel; the remaining nominations can be seen here.

  • Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara (Penguin Random House – Random House)
  • Before She Was Helen by Caroline B. Cooney (Poisoned Pen Press)
  • Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (Penguin Random House - Pamela Dorman Books)
  • These Women by Ivy Pochoda (HarperCollins Publishers - Ecco)
  • The Missing American by Kwei Quartey (Soho Press – Soho Crime)
  • The Distant Dead by Heather Young (HarperCollins Publishers - William Morrow)

Click here for the rest of the nominees.

 
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TRUE CRIME PODCASTS

The Top 11 True Crime Podcasts

Streaming Now, Ranked By Apple

As I’ve often noted here in BunzelGram, true crime stories have fascinated people for as long as there have been stories. (After all, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and even some of the world’s earliest religious legends and texts are peppered with an assortment of violent crimes that may or may not have happened.) The popularity of such tales has led to the creation of its own genre which, in turn, has translated perfectly in the podcast format. To help fans sort through all the programming that’s out there, Newsweek’s Jon Jackson compiled this list of the top true crime podcasts as ranked by Apple's iTunes Podcasts media app. Keep in mind that Apple does not reveal how they rank these things, but it's believed to be based mostly on popularity. All of those mentioned in this are ongoing podcasts with solid reviews among listeners, who tune in to hear stories that seem almost too unsettling or unbelievable to be true.

 
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Sociopaths, And Why We

Like Reading About Them

In her book The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard University psychologist Dr. Martha Stout claims that one out of every 25 people in America is a sociopath. He/she could be the neighbor you chat with while washing your car, your ex-girlfriend/boyfriend who sent you thousands of texts after you broke up, or your uncle sitting across from you at Thanksgiving dinner. Sociopaths are particularly popular in the pages of crime fiction, as they make fascinating characters that can thoroughly drive a plot, or completely twist it. As Joanna Schaffhausen wrote in CrimeReads last week, “The core paradox of a sociopath—someone who appears ordinary on the outside but is potentially dangerous on the inside—creates instant tension. They came into their own in the mid-twentieth century, as scientists’ efforts to qualify and diagnose sociopathy filtered into popular culture. Psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley published his seminal book on clinical signs of sociopathy, The Mask of Sanity, in 1941. [Interestingly], one of fiction’s most enduring sociopaths, The Joker, first arrived on the scene at about the same time.” More recently, such killers as Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Gary Ridgway spawned a host of nonfiction books, including Mindhunter, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, and In The Name Of The Children, by FBI agent Jeffrey Rinek.

 
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The 50 Best Movies Shot In

And Around New York

From The Godfather to Shaft, Serpico to The French Connection, the streets of New York have served as a supporting character (if not the lead) in dozens of crime dramas shot in and around the city, for almost as long as movies have been around. Because of their countless backdrops and backstories, the five boroughs represent a cultural melting pot of American crime and corruption, good and evil, love and laughter. When we watch these films we see the city through the eyes of Robert de Niro’s sociopathic taxi driver, Harvey Keitel’s corrupt cop (several of them, in fact), Ellen Burstyn’s desperate drug addict, and Michael Douglas’ Wall Street greed—all because their stories include the personality of the place, and the people who call it home. Here’s a list of 50 movies (not all of them crime or thrillers) that occur primarily in the city that never sleeps.

 
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2020 Was A Transitional Time

For TV, Film Viewership

The year 2020 has been branded with an assortment of labels and titles—few of them flattering—but from a media perspective, it was a truly transitional time for streaming video. Anxiety-inducing news cycles alternating between COVID updates and political divisiveness—disrupted by on-again, off-again sports programming and movie theater closures—shifted a lot of media consumption to streaming video. For example, as Nielsen reports, the crime show Ozark was one of the most-viewed programs last year, as viewers binged nearly 30.5 billion minutes, across 28 episodes. While new, original content attracted new subscribers to both established and nascent platforms, many of the most-viewed pieces of content on streaming platforms overall were the older shows that first found success on more traditional channels. Outside of episodic programming, the trends are much different, as eight of the top 10 movies (in terms of overall minutes watched) available on SVOD (streaming video on demand) platforms in 2020 were kids’ titles. Unlike adults, children will watch and re-watch their favorite content time and time again, placing their parents’ on the line.

 
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Mr. Mercedes: Stephen King’s First

(And Best) Try At A Murder Mystery

Rarely do we think of Stephen King, the master of horror, as a mystery writer, but one of his most notable books in recent years was Mr. Mercedes, which won the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Novel. The first in a trilogy that continued with Finders Keepers and End Of Watch, Mr. Mercedes got its start as a short story only a few pages long but, in true King fashion, grew exponentially from there. Inspired by a true event about a woman who drove her car into a McDonald's restaurant, the book begins as a Mercedes plows into a crowd of unemployed people standing in line for a job fair, killing 16 and severely injuring many more. Retired cop Bill Hodges starts getting taunting communications from a sociopath (see story, above) who claims to be responsible for the mass murder. Personal note: The entire trilogy was turned into a cable television series for ATT, shot in and around Charleston, SC—which made it convenient for me to appear as an extra in all three seasons of filming. I highly recommend both the books and the series—and if you look carefully enough, you’ll see me alternately playing a store customer, groundskeeper, art patron, and more.

 
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SHAMELESS PROMOTION

Skeleton Key Available

One Week From Tomorrow

A week from tomorrow: That's when you'll be able to download your eBook version of Skeleton Key or buy a print copy online. It's the fourth installment in my Jack Connor mystery series, published by Epicenter Press/ Coffeetown Press in Seattle. Here's a taste of how it begins:

     Salt, sand, tourists, and tequila: all the aromas and sounds, the causes and effects of summer were in the air tonight. A wisp of a breeze trickled in from the dunes, the scent of rum and sunscreen hung in the air, and the rhythmic thrum of reggae and rock and country drifted in on the thick veil of summer heat. The faraway strobe of an airplane heading south to Miami or St. Somewhere blinked in the indigo sky overhead, and the glow of Charleston lit up the sky to the north. It was nightfall on the Carolina shore, the easterly winds were blowing up from the Bahamas, and the open-air drinking establishment known as The Sandbar in Folly Beach was careening headlong into another Friday evening.

     And not a drunk or sober soul in the place had a clue that Death was lurking in the shadows of the night, aiming to crash the party.

 
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